orgotten, but one
of whose patronymics was Chuh. Chuh turns up at Lloyds, in London, and
asks a question about the ship. Noah Quick materialises at Devonport,
and runs a public-house. Salter joins him there. And presently Salter
is up on the Northumbrian coast, professing great anxiety to find a
churchyard, or churchyards wherein are graves with the name
Netherfield on them--he makes the excuse that that is the family name
of his mother's people. Now we know what happened to Salter Quick, and
we also know what happened to Noah Quick. But now I'm wondering if
something else had happened before that?"

"Aye, Mr. Middlebrook?" said Scarterfield. "And what, now?"

"I'm wondering," I answered, leaning nearer to him across the little
table at which we sat, "if Noah and Salter, severally, or conjointly,
had murdered this Netherfield Baxter before they themselves were
murdered? They--or somebody who was in with them, who afterwards
murdered them? Do you understand?"

"I'm afraid I don't," he said. "No--I don't quite see things."

"Look you here, Scarterfield," said I. "Supposing a gang of men--men
of no conscience, desperate, adventurous men--gets together, as men
were together on that ship, the doings and fate of which seem to be
pretty mysterious. They're all out for what they can get. One of them
is in possession of a valuable secret, and he imparts it to the
others, or to some of them--a chosen lot. There have been known such
cases--where a secret is shared by say five or six men--in which
murder after murder occurs until the secret is only held by one or
two. A half-share in a thing is worth more than one-sixth,
Scarterfield--and a secret of one is far more valuable than a secret
shared with three. Do you understand now?"

"I see!" he answered slowly. "You mean that Salter and Noah may have
got rid of Netherfield Baxter and that somebody has got rid of them?"

"Precisely!" said I. "You put it very clearly."

"Well," he said, "if that's so, there are--as has been plain all
along--two men concerned in putting the Quicks out of the way. For
Noah was finished off on the same night that saw Salter finished--and
there was four hundred miles distance between the scenes of their
respective murders. The man who killed Noah was not the man who killed
Salter, to be sure."

"Of course!" I agreed. "We've always known there were two. There may
be more--a gang of them, and remarkably clever fellows. But I'm
getting sure that th